A few hours ago, the Sentinel-2C satellite of the Copernicus / GMES program blasted off from the Kourou base, French Guiana, atop a Vega rocket. After about 57 minutes, the satellite regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage and started sending signals. A few hours later it started deploying its solar panels. After a period of testing, it will replace the Sentinel-2A satellite, launched on June 23, 2015. This is the last launch of the original version of the Vega rocket.
The program originally called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and later Copernicus is intended to create an autonomous system of territorial control through a constellation of satellites that have different functions.
The Sentinel-2C satellite is equipped with a multispectral camera that captures images in 13 spectral bands ranging from visible light to short-wave infrared. It has a 290-kilometer (180 miles) swath to provide a control of the territory at a very advanced level.
The acquisition of images of the territory by the two Sentinel-2 satellites aims in particular to monitor vegetation, soil, and water, which also means crops. Over the years, they monitored the health of crops, providing a lot of environmental information. This information is also useful in environmental monitoring involving forests, glaciers, and coasts. It also proved useful in the event of natural disasters to obtain information on the size and condition of the affected areas.
Like its predecessors, the Sentinel-2C satellite will have a final orbit with an altitude of 786 kilometers and will be sun-synchronous, meaning it will pass over a certain area of the Earth at the same local time. Having two satellites doing this job provides a greater amount of data and redundancy in the event of problems with one of them.
After the testing period of the Sentinel-2C satellite, for a short period, it will work alongside the first of the Sentinel-2 launched, Sentinel-2A. When it’s deemed ready, Sentinel-2C will replace the old satellite, working alongside Sentinel-2B. In the coming years, the Sentinel-2D satellite will be launched and subsequently the new generation Sentinel-2 series will be built.
